Annual Communications Plan
The prompt
$18
Why this works
Building the communications plan around audience priorities rather than organisational milestones ensures the plan serves communication goals rather than just filling in a calendar with internal events. Mapping channels to audiences (email for donors, social for community awareness, local media for policymakers) prevents the plan from treating all channels as equivalent when they reach fundamentally different people. The integration with the fundraising calendar ensures donor communications support the revenue goals of the development team.
Risks & review
Annual communications plans are only as effective as the capacity behind them — a plan that requires more staff hours than exist will be abandoned by March, leaving the organisation with a document that creates guilt rather than structure. Build the plan around realistic capacity and sequence activities to match staff availability and organisational seasonality.